Los Angeles County Breeding Bird Atlas now available!

Los Angeles Audubon Society is pleased to announce the publication of the Los Angeles County Breeding Bird Atlas, reporting on the first-ever project to map the distribution of all of the county’s breeding birds. To celebrate this event, the Society is hosting a reception on March 8th, 2017 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm at Eaton Canyon Nature Center, Pasadena. Complimentary beverages and light snacks will be served commencing at 6:30 pm. Kindly RSVP to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 323-876-0202.

The reception will feature a presentation by the authors on the contents of the volume and its value to scholars, naturalists, environmental consultants, land-use planners, permitting authorities, conservationists, and the birding community. Copies of the hardcover Atlas volume will be available for sale ($49.95 plus sales tax), and two of the authors will be available to sign your volume and answer questions.

The Atlas was written by Larry W. Allen and Kimball L. Garrett, with species-distribution maps compiled by Mark C. Wimer. In its 660 pages, this compendium addresses 228 species found with evidence of breeding during the Atlas field work plus 18 additional historical, island-breeding, and post-Atlas breeding species. Our Atlas findings are based on over 28,000 records provided by over 300 volunteer observers contributing more than 10,000 hours of field effort.

The authors have supplemented this information by consulting extensive ornithological and paleontological literature, extracting data from over 5600 egg-set records, and analyzing trend data from eight county Breeding Bird Survey routes and eight county Christmas Bird Count circles.

As a result, our Atlas is able to present a view of each species’ local breeding biology in detail unprecedented in a work of its kind: county-specific habitat, nest-site, and breeding phenology details; a county population estimate; population trends where data available; seasonal occurrence and migration timing; conservation notes and threat assessments, the subspecies present here, and even fossil records where they exist. The extensive use of ornithological literature and museum collections has enabled authors to present extensive historical and range-wide comparisons for many of these life-history traits.

The Los Angeles County Breeding Bird Atlas is a project of the Los Angeles Audubon Society in cooperation with the Natural History Museum and other county Audubon Chapters: El Dorado, Palos Verdes/South Bay, Pasadena, Pomona Valley, San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica Bay, and Whittier.

To order the Atlas from the LA Audubon Society website:http://bit.ly/2k0Ib2L